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10 Dec 2016 3:14:27pm

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I think very few people would dispute that many of the early scientists and natural philosophers were religious, or that christianity has helped out scientific enquiry from time to time. This is unsurprising. Given how much of Europe was religious for so much of the period we're talking about, it would be hard for those scientists or natural philosophers to be anything but, and most of the findings of science wouldn't conflict with anything held on theological grounds, so the church could be quite happy conceding that, for example, bacteria exist, or that light going through a prism acts a certain way.

What is claimed is that the instant any finding of science contradicted, or seemed to contradict, something held for theological reasons, the church clamped down hard. For example, Galileo. Your position that the church's position was 'consistent with the scientific understanding of the time' is nonsense. The church mustered no scientific arguments. The entire thing was because Galileo suggested something was true that implied humanity wasn't the centre of the universe. The response to Darwin is of the same nature.

The point being made is that the fundamental nature of religious beliefs doesn't permit science to be done on them - religious beliefs aren't held on the basis of argument or evidence. That may be mustered later, but always after the fact. As such, anywhere they talk about the same thing, they tend to conflict, because there are a lot more ways to be wrong than to be right, and beliefs that aren't held on the basis of argument or evidence are much more likely to be wrong than right.